The oldest church in Western Massachusetts, founded in 1637 and located in the heart of the city at Court Square, could be shuttered by the end of the year because a dwindling congregation of barely 150 - half of whom are senior citizens and about two-thirds of whom do not live in the city - can no longer afford to keep up with badly needed maintenance and improvements to the 1,000-seat white-steepled church.

The congregation will decide the fate of the church and the adjoining parish house in September. In the meantime, a breakfast meeting is set for Thursday morning at the church to attempt to stir the community to action before it is too late.

"It's kind of a last attempt on our part to try to get the situation on the radar," said Carol J. Kantany-Casartello, who has been a member of the church for 40 years.

"We have ignored it for a long time because it is so painful to think about," said church moderator Susan R. Saunders.

However, Saunders said late last week that only 25 percent of those invited to the breakfast sent back word they would attend. She called the response "disappointing."

"There's a good possibility the place could be vacant by the end of the year," she said.

David B. Panagore, chief development officer of the Springfield Finance Control Board, who will attend Thursday's meeting, said the Springfield Redevelopment Authority will pay for an appraisal currently under way by Longmeadow commercial real estate appraiser James F. Fisher. The work will determine not only the value of the church property, but examine its best future use.

"It's one of the most significant buildings in the city," Panagore said.

The city literally grew up around the church, which was first built in 1645 and for a time was where residents came to pay their taxes and to hold town meetings. The current building, constructed in 1819, is the fourth church and meeting house, and through its doors came the abolitionist John Brown and the statesman and orator Daniel Webster. The body of the country's sixth president, John Quincy Adams, even lay in state in Old First Church in 1848.

The church was designated a state historical landmark in 1971, and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

But the Rev. J. Thomas Gough, the church's 23rd senior pastor, said just critically needed improvements - a new heating system, a new roof, drastically improving handicapped accessibility - would cost $800,000 to $1 million dollars. At the same time, Saunders said, the church brings in only about $80,000 a year in pledges from the congregation, meaning the church has had to dip into its endowment.

"What we've been doing is eating our seed money," said Robert A. Walker, who has been attending Old First Church for 51 years and is chairman of the board of trustees. "We've been talking about that. You don't have corn if you eat your seeds."

"We can keep the building heated and reasonably safe and reasonably secure for about another year," Saunders said.

Old First Church has been home for years to Open Pantry Community Services Inc., and has been a place where the homeless could find shelter and the hungry food. Alcoholics Anonymous has met there longer than at any other location in the city.

The church has also been the venue for concerts, art exhibitions and civic meetings. It was once home to Springfield Day Nursery, and the Springfield Symphony Chorus still holds auditions in the church each year.

Gough believes that should the end come for Old First Church, the city would sever a tie to its past.

"I think what's lost is, simply by virtue of its location and the theological inclinations of the congregation, I think the city loses a prophetic voice," Gough said. "It loses a piece of its conscience."

"It loses its tie to its own history."

The white-steepled church on the square in the heart of the city affords a sense of place, said Panagore, who pointed out that in other parts of the country there are attempts to create the iconic New England tableau that is Old First Church on Court Square.

"They don't make buildings like this anymore," Panagore said. "They don't make New Englands anymore."